The Deez POTUS honest evaluation thread

[Mr. Deez]

HW Bush was bad on foreign policy and he caved on raising taxes.

However, he did a good job of doing NOTHING during the 1991 economic downturn. He got blamed for it but he let the market respond. The downturn was short.

Your view on HW is almost the complete opposite of how most view him. Most think he did a bad job on the economy (pointing obviously to the recession-unfairly in my view), and most think he did a good job on foreign policy. They point to the seemingly successful first Gulf War and to how his Administration managed the fall of the Soviet Union, which had its problems but could have easily been 10 times worse.

 

[Monahorns]

Your view on HW is almost the complete opposite of how most view him. Most think he did a bad job on the economy (pointing obviously to the recession-unfairly in my view), and most think he did a good job on foreign policy. They point to the seemingly successful first Gulf War and to how his Administration managed the fall of the Soviet Union, which had its problems but could have easily been 10 times worse.

I am a contrarian. I made the comment about foreign policy based on one thing. Recently have read up on what his administration was telling Hussein before he attacked Kuwait. They hemmed and hawed and gave him tacit approval to invade. Then last minute said no. But none of it was direct, so Hussein treated the "no" as a bit of diplomacy only. He bet wrong and invading a country isn't so great anyway. They did I think because Kuwait owed Iraq a bunch of money, so they had some point but still invading a country makes you the bad guy.

But HW Bush's problems was essentially giving Hussein a fuzzy green light to invade, then reneging and sending in the US military to kick them out of Kuwait. I blundering clusterflux of execution.

My comment about the economy was simply that he didn't do what his son did, "kill capitalism to save capitalism" with bank bailouts, stimulus, and QE. The downturn was acute, short and set the Clinton administration up to look good on the economy.